It is so important to be more hooked on the truth than on
wanting to get rid of identity. Asking, "What is the
Truth?" is a demolition project. Most of spirituality is a
construction project. We're ascending and ascending.... It just
keeps building, and a person feels, "I'm getting better and
better." But enlightenment is a demolition project.

- Adyashanti

We are birthed into sangha, into
sacred community. It is called the world.

- Adyashanti [Taken together, these two
quotes express the theme for this issue.]

The flute of the Infinite is played without
ceasing, and its sound is love:

When love renounces all limits, it reaches
truth.

How widely the fragrance spreads! It has
no end, nothing stands in its way.

The form of this melody is bright like a
million suns: incomparably sounds the
vina, the vina of the notes of truth.

- Kabir

` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `

Songs of Kabir
Translated by Rabindranath Tagore

posted to AlongTheWay

"Many spiritual seekers get
"stuck" in emptiness, in the absolute, in
transcendence. They cling to bliss, or peace, or indifference.
When the self-centered motivation for living disappears, many
seekers become indifferent. They see the perfection of all
existence and find no reason for doing anything, including caring
for themselves or others. I call this "taking a false
refuge." It is a very subtle egoic trap; it's a fixation in
the absolute and all unconscious form of attachment that
masquerades as liberation. It can be very difficult to wake
someone up from this deceptive fixation because they literally
have no motivation to let go of it. Stuck in a form of divine
indifference, such people believe they have reached the top of
the mountain when actually they are hiding out halfway up its
slope. Enlightenment does not mean one should disappear into the
realm of transcendence. To be fixated in the absolute is simply
the polar opposite of being fixated in the relative. With the
dawning of true enlightenment, there is a tremendous birthing of
impersonal Love and wisdom that never fixates in any realm of
experience. To awaken to the absolute view is profound and
transformative, but to awaken from all fixed points of view is
the birth of true nonduality. If emptiness cannot dance, it is
not true Emptiness. If moonlight does not flood the empty night
sky and reflect in every drop of water, on every blade of grass,
then you are only looking at your own empty dream. I say, Wake
up! Then, your heart will be flooded with a Love that you cannot
contain."

"If the awakening is taken out of the
rarefied atmosphere of simply 'a realization that I have,' and
taken into the level of 'my human life, and humanity,' it
actually becomes an absolutely, totally unique expression of that
truth. Nobody else throughout all of time is going to carry that
uniqueness into life."

All you have to do is say
yes. Dont make some big project out of it. Dont
make some big deal out of it. Just say yes. You dont
even know what it means to say yes, but you say it
anyway. Youll never know what it means to say yes,
but you do it anyway. Freedom and Love arise when you die into
the unknown mystery of being.

- Adyashanti

"The light of consciousness
has no mind to change or alter anything. When you start to
see the light that you really are, the light waking up in you,
the radiance, you realize it has no intention to change you. It
has no intention to harmonize. It has no agenda. It just happens.
The Truth is the only thing you'll ever run into that has no
agenda. Everything else will have an agenda."

- Adyashanti

source: Emptiness Dancing

Was there a point where the idea of a separate self was
finished for you?

There was a point where the sense of me was done, absolutely, and
then there was a point where the sense of me reappeared. It
was gradual, but over time, I felt myself reincarnating.
The sense of me was reappearing, and at first I was terrified by
it. I thought it meant something. Then I saw that it
didn't make a difference. The sense of me was not separate
from the truth of who I am. Then I really understood what
my teacher had meant when he told me not to cling even to
emptiness, because that is still an exclusion of form. It's
all the same--nothingness, somethingness--all the same continuum.

It was necessary for this mind/body to recognize this, because
there had to be a clinging to emptiness, and an elevation of
emptiness and the sense of no-me. It is a full
circle. I returned to being a regular, ordinary
woman. I am much more ordinary now than I ever have been.

Interview with Gangaji

Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Wisdom

posted to Wisdom-l by Mark Scorelle

I can find only three kinds of business in the universe: mine,
yours, and God's. (For me, the word God means
"reality." Reality is God, because it
rules. Anything that's out of my control, your control, and
everyone else's control  I call that God's business.)

Much of our stress comes from mentally living out of our own
business. When I think, "You need to get a job, I want
you to be happy, you should be on time, you need to take better
care of yourself," I am in your business. When I'm
worried about earthquakes, floods, war, or when I will die, I am
in God's business. If I am mentally in your business or in
God's business, the effect is separation. Being mentally in
your business keeps me from being present in my own. To
think that I know what's best for anyone else is to be out of my
business and is the cause of stress, anxiety and fear.

If you understand the three kinds of business enough to stay
in your own business, it could free your life in a way that you
can't even imagine. The next time you're feeling stress,
ask yourself whose business you're in mentally, and you may burst
out laughing!"

- Byron Katie

Loving What Is

posted to Wisdom-l by Mark Scorelle

"The remedy for an attachment to the happiness of
becoming is to reflect on impermanence and the "four
fundamental thoughts which turn the mind away from the cycle of
existences." As our attachments start to weaken, we
may experience a certain peace in our mind. Grasping, or clinging
to this mental state of calm may then arise. The remedy for
grasping on to this peaceful state is to meditate on altruistic
love and compassion. We should develop love and compassion within
us until they have become completely natural attitudes for us.
Love and compassion are qualities that will accompany us
throughout our entire spiritual progression: from the moment we
first give rise to the enlightened attitude right up until we
achieve Buddhahood itself. This enlightenment will then be
endowed with the body, speech, mind and qualities of a Buddha.
Through the power of love and compassion, all unfavourable
conditions, the disturbing emotions, samsara and its causes will
be destroyed and completely annihilated. Without love and
compassion, we simply do not have enough energy. Even while we
remain trapped in this prison of samsara, subjected to the
influences of the emotions and karma, the qualities of love and
compassion allow us to be guided in the right direction."